May 30, 2014

Reading 16th Century English Records

Call me a geeky nerd but I love the challenge of old handwriting. This image on the left is the baptism record of my 11th great-grandmother Martha Barrett. It took me awhile to find her on the page but by scrutinizing the handwriting of all entries I was eventually able to recognize her first name and the surname. This entry reads:

28 of October was baptised Marthadaughter of Henry Barrett

Isn't the handwriting beautiful??!I used to decipher 16th and 17th century Dutch handwriting - at first I struggled but after a few years I was sort of getting the hang of it. In fact I have some tutorials on my blog in case any of my readers are researching in the same time frame and country. If you think it will help, please see How to Read 16th & 17th Century Handwriting

By the way I was pretty thrilled to find this baptism for Martha. Next I'm going to look for the marriage of her parents. Wish me luck!

Thanks Steve! I do have a few dozen of these Brixham Devon families in my ancestry going back from mid 1800s to early 1500s (no more records before that time) so I am bound to find some early ones that are challenging!

A further point on the transcription,Justin rendered as "Martha ye Daughter". The "y" in"ye" is a thorn, a letter that is no longer used in English. In some scripts it looks like a y, hence common mis-interpretations like 'Ye olde tea shop'.

Phonetically, the thorn is equivalent to 'th', so the baptism reads "Martha the Daughter".

New!

Death Finds a Way: A Janie Riley Mystery by Lorine McGinnis SchulzeJanie Riley is an avid genealogist with a habit of stumbling on to dead bodies. She and her husband head to Salt Lake City Utah to research Janie's elusive 4th great-grandmother. But her search into the past leads her to a dark secret. Can she solve the mysteries of the past and the present before disaster strikes?

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